


What we do in the shadows

by narada-talis (sarensen)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (Keith's dad), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Halloween, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Pre-Relationship, Underage Smoking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-01-16 03:40:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21264458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarensen/pseuds/narada-talis
Summary: A mysterious stranger saves Keith from a fire. Years later, they meet again, but not everything is what it seems…Excerpt:Then the tension seems to seep out of him all at once. His arms come around Keith, pulling him tightly against his chest. His mouth starts to move against Keith’s, and it isn’t like in the movies. It isn’t one of those warm and close-mouthed, chaste kisses - instead, like dry ice and liquid mercury, it’s a cold kind of fire, thick with a kind of dark, primal desire that the wolf inside Keith responds to.





	1. Chapter 1

Keith loses everything that's important in the fire.

It happens a few days after his ninth birthday. He wakes up choking. The world around him is gray, covered in a veil of smoke. It's everywhere, shrouding his room in billows of ash. It's dark except for the ominous light seeping through the crack under the door, orange and strangely menacing.

One hand clamped over his mouth and nose, he struggles out of bed, stumbling over discarded toys on the floor. He flings the door open and the heat hits him like a wall, punching the breath out of him. A wall of flame and molten debris dripping from the ceiling blocks his path. He takes a few involuntary steps back, heart hammering hard enough in his chest to hurt.

Tears start leaking down his cheeks, and dry immediately in the heat. He rushes back to the door and tries calling out to his parents, but the sound catches in the back of his throat, stuttering into a cough.

On his third try, he manages, "Mom!"

Somewhere inside the house he hears Krolia scream as if in answer.

"_Mom_!" he yells in a shaking voice. He clutches onto the doorframe, fighting his body's instinctual urge to retreat from the flames now licking near his fingers.

When she doesn't answer, he backpedals to the opposite wall away from the door. The flame-lit doorframe swims through tears borne from smoke and panic. He sinks down into a ball, hugging his knees, and buries his face in his arms. He can't breathe anymore, his frantic coughs helpless against the hot smoke burning the back of his throat.

When he squeezes his eyes shut, something tingles at the edge of his senses, the barest itch at the back of his skull. Later, he'll recognize it for what it was: a premonition of sorts; not a warning so much as a tiny flowerpetal of fate brushing against his life. Now, he's too overwhelmed to notice it, too scared and too alone.

The window explodes next to him. Shards of glass tinkle against the floor, walls, and desk. Keith's head whips up. Through the smoke, he can only just make out the vague shape of a man. He's big, and casts around the room as though looking for something.

Instinct takes over. In his panic, Keith tries to crawl away, but the man grabs him around the waist. He feels himself being dragged toward the window. His fingers scrabble uselessly for purchase on the rug, palms burning over the rough surface. His only thought is getting away from the man; getting to his parents somehow.

"Let me go!" he yells.

The man doesn't. Instead, he hauls Keith up and slings him over his shoulder like he weighs nothing. Keith kicks and screams, beating his fists against the broad back underneath him to no avail. The man ducks through the window and drops to the ground, landing heavily. Keith slips over his shoulder and tries to run, but he's not quick enough.

"We've got to go back!" he hears himself pleading as the man pulls him back by the wrist, "My mom and dad are still in there!"

A deep voice close to his ear says, "I'm sorry, it's too late. I couldn't save them."

Keith kicks and screams, struggling to get free and go back inside, but the grip on him is too tight.

In contrast with the heat of the fire, it's suddenly too cold now that they're outside, the air too clear, no more smoke to stop the sobs escaping Keith's throat. The man sinks down and deposits Keith in a kind of heap on the ground. Illuminated by the light of the streetlamp, it's obvious he's the kind of man Keith's father would have warned him to stay away from: two-tone hair and a ragged scar over the bridge of his nose and a steel prosthetic arm starting at the abrupt end of his shoulder. He looks like he's seen hell - or caused it.

Keith doesn't care. He surges up and buries himself in the stranger's chest, and for the minutes or hours he stays like that, quietly crying, the stranger doesn't move. Doesn't even seem to breathe.

Eventually, exhaustion and grief win, and Keith passes out in the man's arms.

It doesn't occur to him until the next morning that they had been ice cold.

\---

Keith loses everything that's important in the fire.

He gains an obsession.

He wakes up at sunrise, curled up on the cold ground, alone. His hands are soot-black and shaking, his mind too numb for any more tears. The man is gone.

Men in different uniforms start arriving at the house, and as if from a great distance - as if none of this is happening to _him_, but rather to some copy of him in another world, far away - Keith watches them salvage what they can. It isn't much. A red jacket and one of his mother's hunting knives is all that remains of his life.

He sits next to the smouldering ashes of the house all day, hugging his charcoal-smudged knees and watching people come and go.

Part of him waits for the man from the fire to come back.

Part of him feels disappointed when he doesn't.

Before the sun sets a lady pulls up in a big car. She says she's from social services. She says a lot of things. All Keith hears is that things can never go back to the way they were. She puts him in the back seat and takes him away, and beyond his reflection in the windows, the smouldering ruined beams of his home slowly shrink into the distance.

They put him in a home, then in a different one. He fights with the people that call him their son, but never mean it. One social worker eventually slaps the label "problem child" onto his profile. From then on he makes sure he deserves it. He moves from one family to another, from one school to the next. He puts up walls that can withstand any fire, but also keep out any friends. He starts smoking in middle school; quits in senior year.

Years pass. The knife, the jacket, and the memory of the nameless man that saved his life become his whole world, because what else does he have? He goes back to the old house every day, after school, first thing on Saturday morning, Sunday afternoon in the rain, in the snow, in the wind and hail. He sees them rebuild it from the wreckage, sees a new couple move in, sees their dog lying in the sun on the porch, sees the car arrive back from the hospital with a new baby.

But he never sees the stranger again.

He graduates high school and moves out of the home he's only been at for three months as soon as he can. Gets a job at a mechanic shop fixing bikes. Takes up smoking again. He goes to the house before work, sometimes during his breaks.

He leans against the oak tree across the road, turning Krolia's knife around in his hands, and watches, and waits.

\---

Ten years to the day since the fire, he decides to give up.

He stays at the house till the moon comes up, remembering that night, remembering the sound of the fire crackling through the rafters and the iron grip of the stranger's arms around his waist. He tells himself he was being stupid, that he'd been holding on to the idea of meeting the man again because he represented the last time Keith saw his parents, or because he wanted to thank him for saving his life, or because he wanted to scream at him for not saving his parents', an explosive release of the grief and injustice and searing, roiling anger about losing his parents that's been inside of him all this time.

He tells himself it's time to let it go. To let him go. Then he crushes his cigarette butt under the heel of his shoe with a kind of resigned acceptance and turns resolutely away from the old house.

The wind carries the first whispers of snow to come as he starts walking back to the crappy one-room he's renting. He shivers and tugs his scarf up higher. Yellow leaves crunch underfoot as he stops on the sidewalk, waiting for a car to pass so he can cross.

A flash of white catches his eye. He looks up.

The stranger from the fire is standing across the road from him.

Keith's breath leaves him in a sharp exhale.

He looks unchanged from that night, frozen in the shape of Keith's memories of him. He has his hands shoved deep into the pockets of a long coat, the barest sliver of steel glinting under the streetlight where his prosthetic peeks out from under one long sleeve.

Keith blinks a few times, willing the vision, or daydream, or _whatever_ it is, to disappear. His mind's been filled with thoughts of the man all day today. It's just tricking him into seeing what he wants to see. That's all this is.

The man doesn't disappear, however. When the light changes, he crosses the street, away from Keith.

Keith stares after him, heedless of the swarm of pedestrians thinning to a trickle as the signal starts to flash red. Then he shakes himself and bounds across the road after him. Car horns blare as he dodges and weaves through the traffic, urgency overriding caution. He vaults over a fire hydrant and catches himself against a wall as his feet nearly slip out from under him.

The man is right in front of him, almost within arm's reach. He turns into an alleyway between shops...

... And by the time Keith skids around the corner, he's gone. Disappeared in a way that shouldn't be possible. The alley is empty but for a dumpster; no other exit except the one Keith's standing in. Light and sound spill from the back door of a restaurant kitchen briefly, before it shuts both away from the darkness outside.

Keith stares at the empty space, panting. "What--"

He cuts off with a yelp as someone grabs him by the wrist. It happens in the blink of an eye. Before he even has time to call out, he's wrenched to the side and shoved back against the alley wall hard enough to punch the breath out of him. The fingers gripping his arm are so strong he can feel the bones of his wrist shifting within their grasp.

"Why were you following me?" It's the stranger from the fire. His voice is deep and raspy, filled with suspicion.

"You saved me," Keith manages, his voice rough, "ten years ago. From the burning house."

The man's eyes narrow. Up close, they glint with unnatural color - not the blueish grey of normal eyes, but the silver of moonlight reflected on snow, catching some indiscernible light not reflected by any normal surface. His face is untouched by the breath of time. He looks exactly the same as he did back then.

The man stares at Keith, then pulls back slightly with a jolt of recognition.

"I waited for you," Keith continues, surprising himself. "Went back every day. I never got to say thank you."

The man lets him go. Rubbing his wrist, Keith takes a closer look at him: the scar over the bridge of his nose, the metal prosthetic disappearing underneath the sleeve of his coat. And he had been wrong. The man isn't entirely the same: his hair is different, now; before, it was black with a shock of white at the fringe. Now, it's all silver - a match for his eyes. Keith swallows a few times under the stranger's heavy look as the silence stretches between them.

The man stands slightly back from him, coat stirred by the cool wind. He looks at Keith in a way he doesn't fully understand, as if he can see right through his soul.

Then he says, "You're welcome," and disappears.

It shouldn't be possible. One minute, he's there, the next, gone, moving faster than any human should be able to.

The stranger leaves Keith slumped against the wall, staring after him wide-eyed. His heart is pounding in his throat. And when he reaches up to touch his cheek, it's still warm from the blush.

\---

He isn't sure why, but he goes back to the alley the next night. He tells himself he's just taking a walk. He tells himself it doesn't have anything to do with the stranger. He tells himself, as he leans back against the wall with one knee bent and lights up a cigarette, it definitely isn't because he wants to see him again.

He has his hair tied up and a thick scarf around his neck. The warm smell of cinnamon wafts from the bakery across the road, its windowsills decked with pumpkins and gossamer cobwebs housing overlarge fake spiders. It's tacky. Keith kind of likes it.

People stream past the entrance to the alley, huddled against the wind. The forecast said snow tonight. It's cold enough.

When the stranger walks past the alley mouth Keith almost doesn't believe his eyes. Part of him hadn't really thought he'd come back. He tosses his cigarette to the ground and dashes after him, out onto the sidewalk, then hesitates. He hadn't thought past this point. The part of him that was convinced he wouldn't see him again doesn't know what to do next. He grabs the stranger's shoulder because he doesn't know what else to do.

The man whips around before he can touch him, stopping Keith in his tracks. He's wearing the same scarf and coat as yesterday, Keith thinks absently as he takes a step back.

"Why do you keep following me?" the man asks. He's looking at Keith in that way he has again, as if he can see right through him.

"I..." Keith doesn't know what to say. As if on autopilot, his mouth forms the words, "I want to know your name." He isn't sure why.

"My name?" the man says after a while. He looks at Keith assessingly. "Why?"

"... Please." Keith says in answer.

People crowd around them on the sidewalk, walking home from work briskly or window shopping or perching on the railing buried in their phones while they wait for their friends. They avoid Keith and the stranger like water flowing around a rock, leaving an unnatural space around them in the middle of the pavement. Together, they're in their own little bubble of silence, seemingly unnoticed by the world around them. Keith can hear himself breathing.

The man looks torn, frowning at the opposite side of the street and clenching his good hand, tongue darting out to lick his lips.

Then, quietly, he says, "Shiro."

"_Shiro_," Keith exhales. The sound feels right, like a missing piece finally slotting into place.

Some cultures believe knowing someone's name gives you power over them. Keith doesn't think anything could have power over Shiro. There's something just a little bit _off_ about him; the way he moves, deliberately slow, and the unnatural glow of his eyes, gleaming even outside the pool of light cast by the shop windows nearby.

"What are you?" Keith breathes out. And he realizes as he says it that it's something he's known all along. How fast he came at Keith, the strength of his grip, the way he just _disappears_ as if he were never even there.

The way Shiro's eyes narrow confirms it.

"What am I?" he says, taking another step toward Keith, and Keith involuntarily takes one back. "I'm dangerous. You shouldn't have come back."

He steps right into Keith's personal space and he smells like expensive cologne but underneath that, not quite hidden, is something else - something dark and primal. Metallic. His eyes glint in the streetlight. "You should stay away from me. For your own good."

He turns to go, but Keith's hand shoots out to grab his wrist, surprising himself with his own speed. The metal is hard and cold in his fingers, unforgiving. "Wait."

Shiro looks at their hands, almost surprised, then up at Keith. His expression turns calculating, eyes flicking over Keith, down and up again.

In the window beside them, unnoticed, Keith's reflection stares at an empty space in front of him where Shiro should have been.

Keith says, "I know you're not human. What are you?"

"The better question is," Shiro replies, "what are _you_?"

Keith drops his hand. His mouth works for a second before he manages, "What do you mean?"

Shiro looks at him quietly for a while, assessing. "You don't know, do you."

He turns and starts walking away.

Keith wants to follow, but his legs don't seem to want to work. He shouts after him, "_What do you mean_?"

But Shiro's already gone.

\---

That night, Keith can't sleep. He stares at the ceiling. Shiro's glinting eyes swim in front of him in the dark. To distract himself, he tries to remember things about his life before the fire. He turns onto his side, squeezing his eyes shut, and tries to build a picture of what his parents looked like. It's difficult - he doesn't even have any photos of them. His father, in his mind, is a collection of black and tan and soft-spoken words, kind eyes, maybe, a gruff face. Krolia - his mom - was not that: she'd been sharp edges and danger to everyone except Keith. With Keith, she was gentle fingers carding through hair, crystalline laughter, and the smell of sweet lemongrass surrounding him for a goodnight hug.

Nothing in his memories of them speaks of _not human_, of _monster_.

He sighs, rolling over. When Shiro had said, "You don't know, do you?", he'd looked genuinely surprised. Intrigued. That a creature such as him could be anything but bored by someone like Keith was laughable. And yet, the way he'd looked at him...

Thoughts of Shiro fill his mind, and with a heavy sigh, Keith resigns himself to a sleepless night.

\---

By the time the shops open on Saturday, Keith is already waiting outside. He crushes his cigarette butt under the heel of his shoe and shoulders past the attendant as they open the doors. He buys the biggest map of the city he can find, some sharpies, string, and thumbtacks.

His shift that day is without end, time stretching unnaturally long as he watches the seconds treacle by on the clock. By the time the bell sounds, he's already half out the door. He goes to the internet cafe near his house, pays for three hours, and goes to work.

He starts with what he knows about Shiro.

_Inhuman speed and strength_  
_Glowing eyes_  
_Only comes out at night_  
_Incredibly fucking hot like it's impossible for a normal human to be so good looking_

Google spits out a bunch of results, pages of answers to all the questions he has, and a few he hasn't thought of yet.

They all point to one thing.

It startles an incredulous laugh out of him. All the other patrons in the cafe briefly turn to him, but go back to their business when he growls "What're you looking at?" at them.

He turns back to the screen, staring at the results page. Words jump out at him in isolation, and as he reads page after page after page he realizes he isn't really surprised by any of it.

His lips move silently over the words, "_Feeds on the vital essence of the living_", and "_Immortal_".

He's seen the movies. He knows the lore. But this is _Shiro_, the man who saved him from a burning house. Not some evil mythological being roaming the night in search of virgin blood.

And yet...

The way Shiro's eyes glowed silver even in the dark bubbles to the forefront of his memory.

Of course it shouldn't be real. Of course it shouldn't be possible. Of course part of Keith has always known, ever since the night of the fire, since he pressed his ear against Shiro's chest and couldn't hear a heartbeat.

More than anything, the way his presence endured in Keith's mind for years and years makes this feel... right. Whether by some supernatural power or not, Shiro's made a home in his head, etched in his every thought.

Then a stray sentence on a Wikipedia page catches his eye.

"_... can be destroyed by a stake through the heart, fire, beheading and direct sunlight_".

"Destroyed by fire..." he whispers, staring at the screen.

"Looking for Halloween costumes?" a voice says right behind him, startling him. Keith turns to glower at the shop owner, who raises his hands in a gesture of peace. "Sorry, man. Didn't mean to scare you."

The man is looking at him expectantly, waiting for him to answer. Keith doesn't. In the end, his glare sends the man away muttering about "kids these days" and "no manners at all."

Keith turns back to the screen, where a picture of Vlad the Impaler is staring back at him from on top of a mound of bleeding corpses.

"You're crazy, Keith," he mutters to himself. "That's it. You're nineteen and over the wall."

He prints out the results anyway.

He's leaving the cafe with a sheaf of papers in his backpack when he spots a flash of silver from the corner of his eye. But when he turns to look, the opposite side of the street is empty. Bare tree branches sway in the wind, swirling a torrent of orange leaves. He steps up the pace, hurrying home, and locks his apartment door behind him with shaky hands.

\---

In his apartment is a bare wall, windowless, with paint chipping off the cornices. He tapes the map up with duct tape, marks his old house on it with a sharpie circle, and the alleyway where he met Shiro again. The two are connected with red string. On a post-it, he writes "Not Human", and slaps it on the wall next to the map.

The internet cafe gets a circle with a question mark next to it. The picture of Vlad goes in one corner. Keith scribbles a sharpie mustache on him, then wishes he hadn't. His Google results stay on the desk, for now. He isn't sure if he's going to put them on the wall as research, or as an epitaph.

A week passes, and he starts seeing Shiro everywhere. On his way from night school, under a streetlamp. On the way to work, leaning against a tree. When he leaves Starbucks, he opens his coffee to add sugar and thinks he sees him through the escaping steam. The same thing happens every time - when he turns to look, Shiro isn't there. And Keith starts to wonder - is he really seeing Shiro, or does he just really _want_ to?

His wall gains a few sticky notes with pencil sketches of eyes that may or may not belong to Shiro, and a postcard with a picture of a vampire saying "Just Vanted To Say Hello" on it.

At night school, he finds his concentration slipping. He opens his textbooks at home to go over his notes from class, only to find them covered in doodles of eyes instead.

At work, he catches himself standing in the middle of the floor, staring at the hands of the clock, his mind filled with memories of the last time he saw Shiro. Once, he thinks he spots him through the window and drops everything to run outside. There's no one there. There's no one anywhere on the street. But he's sure he saw him.

He starts forgetting to eat.

And then the dreams start.

He sees Shiro standing over his bed, watching him in the dark. His eyes catch the light from the streetlamp outside, glowing silver. He smiles at Keith, and when he does, two long incisors peek from under his top lip.

The night before Halloween, Keith wakes up, shivering, to close the window he doesn't remember leaving open. He isn't sure whether he really sees the tail end of a long coat disappearing around the street corner below, or if his imagination and the late hour are playing tricks on him.

The next morning he wakes from fitful sleep to an early snowfall blanketing the world in white. He checks the latch on the window; walks around the apartment block looking for footprints he knows he won't find.

And then he sits down on the steps leading up to his block and waits, watching the day and the world pass by. He catches his own reflection in the basement windows peeking over the brush: dark rings under his eyes, messy hair, hollow cheeks. It should bother him. It doesn't.

Night falls, eventually, and he sees the familiar flash of silver in the corner of his eye.

He leaps to his feet, squeezes his eyes shut, clenches his fists, and whispers, "Vampire."

After a few seconds pass and nothing happens, he turns his head.

Shiro is frowning at him from the opposite side of the street.

Keith looks him right in the eye and says it again, a bit louder, knowing he'll hear him. "Vampire."

Still no reaction from Shiro, so Keith takes a deep breath and shouts as loud as he can, "_Vampire_!"

People stop to stare at the boy screaming into the road.

It happens faster than Keith can understand. Shiro just _appears_ right in front of him, without seeming to move. He grabs Keith by the wrist and the world kind of blurs around them.

When it unblurs they're in the now-familiar alley, miles from Keith's apartment. The world spins and Keith stumbles forward to lean against the wall. His lungs feel squeezed, as if the air was all wrung out of them.

Leaves crunch, and then Shiro is crowding him upright with his back against the wall. A fist made of steel slams down next to Keith's head. "I warned you to stay away," he growls, his voice dripping with menace that seems foreign to him, out of place. "Now you're going to see why."

He opens his mouth, lip pulling back, and it's different from the dream. His real fangs are sharper, longer, two curved incisors spearing from the top, and two slightly shorter ones from the bottom.

Keith stares at them, heart pounding. He can't seem to look away. He swallows heavily, and distantly hears himself say, "I didn't want to."

Shiro falters, fangs retracting slightly.

Confidence bolstered, Keith tears his eyes away from the fangs and looks up at Shiro, repeating, "I didn't want to stay away from you."

Shiro's face scrunches up. He looks like, out of all the things he had been expecting to hear, this wasn't it. He looks... adorably confused. "O--oh. I. Why?"

Keith opens his mouth to give any of the thousand answers that spring into his mind - _because fire is one of the few things that can kill you and you still came into a burning house to save me, because I spent so many years looking for you that finally having you in front of me seems like a dream --_

He never gets the chance. The muffled bang of a silenced gun announces an explosion of brick and silver shards next to his head, pelting into his face and neck. He ducks, throwing his arms up. Shiro whirls around, baring his fangs with a hiss.

A group of men have gathered in the mouth of the alleyway, shutting it off. They have guns and crossbows and honest-to-god _swords_.

"There he is!" one of them shouts. "Get him!"

One of the men has a square glass bottle in one hand, and a dangerous-looking wooden post in the other. He throws the bottle at Shiro; clear liquid sprays out from it in an arc. It fizzles where it lands on Shiro, steam rising, and makes him double over, crying out in pain. Two men each grab an arm, wrestling him down to his knees. Another spritzes more of the clear liquid into his face, leaving long, red welts.

Keith panics. He yells, "Stop! Let him go!", and rushes over. He grabs one man's arm, pulling it free. Aiming his leg into the opening, he kicks as hard as he can into his ribs.

Hands grab Keith from behind, hauling him back.

"Oh, we're not here for _him_," says a tall man wearing a cowboy hat from the mouth of the alley. He's been hanging back, watching the others. Their leader. He gestures, and the hands holding Keith back drop him, too suddenly.

He stumbles forward, whirling around in bewilderment --

\-- and all thought stops as something hits him with a dull thud.

He looks down, slowly, at where a metal shaft is sticking out of his side. Pain explodes through his body, electricity wracking his limbs and bringing him to his knees.

"Keith!" he distantly hears Shiro yell as he struggles to break free of his captors.

On the edge of hearing, the leader's voice swims through the pain. "We let you get away ten years ago," it says, but the pain is too bad for Keith to entirely grasp its meaning. "We won't make the same mistake again."

Keith is having trouble focusing. His body convulses with spasms. He bites the inside of his cheek, trying to fight through the pain, but it's no use. Darkness starts to creep in around the edges of his vision.

_Keith_, Shiro's voice echoes again, but it sounds different now. It's suddenly loud, too loud, as if it's coming from right inside his head.

_S-Shiro?_ Keith thinks.

_Keith, you have to fight it. You have to get up._

_I-- can't. Hurts._

_I know. But you're strong enough to fight it. I know you are. Get up, Keith. I can't do this alone._

Keith clutches onto the sound of Shiro's voice. He squeezes his eyes shut, curls his fingers, and lets his nails dig into his palms. Something inside him shifts, starts to change, something he can't put words to. Something that doesn't need words.

_Get up._

He isn't sure if it's Shiro's voice, or his own. Slowly, he manages to get one arm underneath him. With great effort, he starts to wrench his body upright, inch by inch.

"Oh. The little halfbreed thinks he can fight it," says the leader, voice dripping with contempt.

Keith wrestles one foot underneath him, shifting into a crouch. Dimly, he registers a strange wetness on his palms.

The leader says, "We'll cut you up and feed you to the crows. Just like your mother."

Keith's eyes snap open.

The world seems suddenly in sharp focus, every minute detail painfully visible - the tiny flecks of cigar ash dusting the front of the leader's coat, the oil stains on the hands of the man next to him. Keith can smell the wet tar of the alley, the distant aroma of bread from the bakery. He can smell blood. He isn't sure if it's his own. Every rustle of clothing as the attackers move is as loud as nails over chalkboard. Their shoes are miniature explosions as they shuffle around.

He looks down at his hands and finds vicious-looking claws instead of his own fingers, the nails elongated and crooked and sharp enough to cut skin. His palms are covered in bright red blood. The sharpened edges of long teeth brush against his lip as he opens his mouth to taste the air, and finds panic, fear and surprise.

"He's shifting!" someone shouts, and, "Don't let him change! He'll be too dangerous!"

Keith pulls the taser shaft from his side with a wet sound, and tosses it to the ground. It doesn't even hurt anymore. The men start to back away as he slowly gets to his feet. From the corner of his eye, he can just make out the vicious grin on Shiro's face.

He lunges at the men. He isn't himself. He doesn't even think about the sound of flesh tearing or how slippery everything is starting to get from the blood. He's all rage and instinct, and if part of him cringes away at the morality of what he's doing, it's too far down below for him to reach. One by one, he takes them all down - three of them, four, five - until only the leader and the hunters holding Shiro down are left.

A sudden, sharp pain in his back brings him to an abrupt halt. He arches backward, gasping. His knees wobble, then give way underneath him. The sharpened point of a silver arrow peeks out from between his ribs, the shaft embedded in his back. The pain is worse than anything he could imagine. Blood pools where he sags.

Someone grabs him by the hair, jerking his head up. The blade of a sword comes to rest against his neck.

For a few slow seconds, everything stops.

The badly scratched-up leader leans over him, his upside-down face twisted into an ugly leer. "Know what happens to wild animals in the city?" he asks. "They get put down."

The blade cuts lightly into Keith's throat. A trickle of blood slips down to pool in his collar. He's too afraid to move, too afraid to breathe, eyes stretched wide and swivelling to try and see his captor.

And then the pressure on his throat is gone. The sword clatters to the ground. Keith slumps forward, gulping huge mouthfuls of air gratefully.

Eventually, he musters the strength to look around. The leader has vanished. The remaining hunters are gone. It shouldn't be possible. But then, when Shiro's involved, impossible is a relative term. Keith grasps the tip of the arrow sticking out of his chest with one hand, and _pulls_. It slides out of him with a wet sound he can't afford to think too much about.

A hand closes over his. It's cold, glinting silver, and covered in dried blood. Keith looks up. Then he slumps against Shiro, suddenly more exhausted than he's ever been. Shiro bears his weight, putting his human arm around him. It may as well be the prosthetic for how cold it is.

Keith doesn't care. He reaches up to bury clawed fingers in Shiro's hair and pulls him down, pressing their mouths together.

Shiro makes a muffled yelp, nearly toppling over. He pushes Keith away and opens his mouth to say something, but Keith interrupts:

"I know it's dangerous to be around you." He uses one claw to push his own lip up, showing Shiro one long fang. With an embarrassed chuckle, he says, "But it looks like I can be dangerous too."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another attack by the Hunters leaves Keith with even more questions. He meets some other Were-creatures (and Lance) and finds out Shiro might be hiding something from him.

The diner is filled with the soft strains of 50's pop music and the clinking of cutlery. It's warm inside. The lights cast a merry yellow glow over everything. A Christmas tree tall enough to brush the roof has been erected in one corner. Outside, the moonrise outlines dark clouds in silver. Keith finds himself at a momentary loss for words, and shovels a handful of fries into his mouth to cover the silence.

It's been three days since the attack. Three days since Keith had last seen Shiro. Three days, seventeen hours and twenty three minutes since he'd kissed him.

Not that Keith's counting or anything.

Three days since Shiro had disappeared, just like he always does, and Keith had been left kneeling with his heart as empty as the alleyway, the hurried _"I can't do this,"_ echoing in his ears.

The next two days had passed in a haze. He'd slept past his alarm, and texted in sick to work. Holed himself up in his apartment with the drapes shut, mind racing to try and piece together what had happened. What it meant. What he _is_. He spent hours staring in the mirror, looking for signs of change he didn't find. His wounds had healed without a trace, his claws retracted, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't make the fangs grow back.

He skipped his night classes. Kept peeking out the drapes for signs of Shiro, or the black government car he was convinced would show up outside his window. He kept jumping at every sound, in constant fear that it was the police coming to arrest him for the Hunters he'd killed.

But another day and night passed and no one came to drag him away. No one came to his apartment at all, no police and definitely no attractive vampires with silver hair. He gradually began to relax. He even considered going back to night class - it would at least, he reasoned, offer a distraction, and mean he wouldn't be left alone with all his questions.

Mind made up, he'd locked the apartment behind him, turned around, and froze to the spot.

There he was, staring at Keith from down the hallway, no more than a silhouette in the dark - but one that was immediately recognizable.

Shiro.

He walked over slowly, shifting his backpack nervously over his shoulder. "Hey."

And Shiro had asked, "You hungry?"

They'd ended up here, at the diner down the road from Keith's apartment.

Keith is on his second cheeseburger, alternating bites between mouthfuls of fries. Shiro sits opposite him, his skin looking almost translucent in the artificial light. He has his hands wrapped around a mug of steaming black coffee. He hasn't drunk any.

"You always eat this much?" he asks eventually, breaking the awkward silence that had stretched between them and watching Keith with an expression of rapt interest.

Keith shakes his head, mumbling around a mouth full of food, "Mm mmh. Ever since the other night though, it's like I'm hungry all the time. Can't get full."

Shiro nods lightly. "The Shift can take it out of you."

Keith swallows his bite, puts down his burger, and looks up at Shiro. And despite having thought of a million questions for the man the next time he saw him, he finds he can't think of a single one. The song on the radio changes to something by Elvis Presley. Cliché for a diner, overdone, but Keith kind of likes it.

"I can't eat human food," Shiro says, picking one of Keith's more recent questions right out of his mind, "But I like how the coffee smells. And it's warm."

Keith's eyes flicker down to where silver and human fingers are laced around the cup. When he looks up again, Shiro is still staring at him. It should be uncomfortable, frightening even, to have that liquid silver gaze trained on him so intently. Instead, he finds it... intoxicating. He meets the vampire's stare like a challenge, stomach tingling with what he would later come to realize is the thrill of the hunt.

"Why did you kiss me?" Shiro asks.

The sudden change of topic makes Keith blink. Shiro's expression hasn't changed. He looks at Keith as if he's something to be studied, an object of mild fascination capturing his attention in an otherwise tedious environment. This, too, excites Keith, having Shiro focused only on him like this.

"I..." he starts to answer, then trails off. He shifts in his chair, pushing fries around on his plate. "I dunno. Isn't seduction supposed to be like, one of the vampire powers or something?"

Shiro just tilts his head slightly to the side. He doesn't answer.

"I guess it was just adrenaline..." Keith says. "I--"

He cuts off as his arm jolts. A waitress stumbles over him, spilling the contents of the glass she was carrying over their table. It crashes to the ground loudly. Keith's knife slips, slicing a long cut through his index finger. He hisses, lifting it to his mouth to suck on it.

The waitress is apologizing profusely, using a handful of paper napkins to dab at the table and at Keith's shirt. But Keith doesn't pay her any attention: across the table from him, Shiro has frozen stiff, staring fixedly at the blood on Keith's finger. The ambient sound of the restaurant fades. It suddenly seems quiet enough that Keith can hear himself breathing.

He swallows. "... Shiro?"

The next moment, Shiro is out of his chair, coffee abandoned. The bell above the door announces his exit.

Shellshocked, Keith stares after him, then bustles past the waitress, ignoring her protests to run after him. After the warmth of the diner, the cold November air hits him like a slap in the face. His breath steams a cloud in front of him as he skids to a halt in the snow, head whipping around.

Christmas and Thanksgiving decorations have replaced the ones for Halloween, shades of red and amber and warm light in the shopfronts in stark contrast to the monochrome streets and snow.

"Shiro!"

A flash of silver down the road catches his attention. Keith sprints, pushing past late-night shoppers and clubbers and shift workers, veering past the sudden fire hydrant in his way, and nearly stumbling over his own feet to grab hold of Shiro's arm.

"Shiro, wait."

To his surprise, Shiro does. He turns just enough to look at him with one silver eye, keeping his head angled away. "Let go, Keith."

"Why?" Keith pants, leaning forward to rest his other hand on his knee. "Did I do something wrong?"

"It's not your fault," Shiro says, "I just can't be around you right now."

"I don't understand," Keith says, and then he does. He slowly straightens up, lifting up his hand. The cut has already mostly healed, but a thin line of red is still visible. "It's the blood, isn't it."

Shiro backs away a step, looking at Keith's finger as though it suddenly turned into a wooden stake. Keith pushes his hand into his pocket quickly, not missing the way Shiro's gaze follows it, hungrily. Keith's heartbeat quickens, skin tingling as his body instinctively reacts to the predator's threat it senses from Shiro.

"... Shiro?"

Shiro's eyes snap up to Keith's face, and whatever had overcome him seems to disappear, or be forcefully pushed down.

"I'm sorry," he says, "I... It's the hunger. I haven't eaten in a while."

"How long?" Keith asks. When Shiro doesn't answer, he repeats it.

"... Months," is what Shiro says after an emptiness that feels like hours. "I'm cursed, Keith." His face crumples a bit, and he looks away. "I told you before it's dangerous to be near me. Now more than ever, I need you to stay away from me."

_You're the one who came looking for me_, Keith wants to point out, but just watches him instead, pressing his other hand into his pocket as well. Maybe Shiro will hear the thought anyway.

"Sometimes I can't control myself," Shiro says, and when he does, Keith can see the sharp points of fangs just brushing his bottom lip. "When I smell human blood, it's like something takes me over. I don't wanna hurt you, Keith."

Keith wants to protest. He wants to say, _I'm only a halfbreed._

Something stops him.

Shiro turns and walks away, and this time, Keith doesn't run after him. As he disappears around the corner, the first snowflakes start to fall.

\---

Keith goes back to the diner to pay for their food. The waitress from before seems relieved to see him, asks him if he's okay when she hands him his change. In a daze, he isn't sure what he replies. He leaves her a tip, then heads back into the cold, back home, because he isn't sure where else to go.

White starts to dust the streets, deep enough for him to leave footprints behind. The snow is early this year, and it's unseasonably cold.

He cuts through the rail yard. It's dark at this time of night, abandoned, but Keith knows his way through. The empty shells of trains stare from their square window eyes, and gravel crunches beneath his feet. It's illegal, but it's a shortcut, and he's more than ready to get home and get warm.

It turns out to be a bad idea.

He hears them coming, of course. In the past few days, he's been starting to hear more and more. It comes in bursts - conversations between his neighbours four floors up, the radio playing in a car on the highway, the rapid heartbeats of the pigeons lined up on the telephone poles outside his apartment.

He hears the rustle of their clothes and the crunch of their boots on the rail yard gravel long before he sees the group of Hunters emerge from behind the dark husk of a train car.

There are six of them, five men and a woman. Keith knows they're Hunters because of the weapons they carry - swords, crossbows, shotguns. He stops in his tracks, then turns and is sprinting in the opposite direction before his brain fully has the chance to order his body to run.

A few moments later, the wind shifts, carrying the scent of more Hunters to him. They're coming from in front of him, perhaps another four or five. He slip-slides to a halt, spraying gravel, as they appear out of the shadows.

Breathing hard, he whips to and fro, trying to keep all the Hunters within his sight.

"Thought you'dve learned your lesson," he growls, eyes flickering between the two approaching groups.

"We avenge our own," says one of the men, hefting his shotgun.

Keith tenses his thighs, fingers curling, every muscle in his body tense and ready to leap.

But then the wind changes again, and carries on it a scent that makes Keith freeze. He _knows_ that smell. Familiarity hits him like a knife in the gut. It throws him back mentally to a warm room, dust motes dancing on a beam of sunlight. Something soft tickling his nose. A laugh like bells tinkling echoes as if from far away.

He casts around wildly, stretching up to taste the air in a desperate attempt to catch that scent again. To his senses, it's like a trail of color, sparkling on the wind. Its source - his eyes drift down to land on the only woman in the group. He frowns.

He _knows_ her.

He knows this woman. He doesn't know how, or where from, but he's sure of it.

A crossbow bolt whizzes past him, just barely missing his arm. He spins to the side, dropping into a crouch. His body reacts before his mind has time to catch up, his senses sharpening the same way they did during the previous attack. The rail yard doesn't seem dark anymore - even under the thick cover of leaves from the trees above, he can see everything clearly, as if lit by some invisible light source. He smells the crisp, cold smell of snow, mixed aromas of coffee and frying oil from the far-away diner, rust and gas from the dormant trains, and underneath it all, that warm familiar smell like an old sweater, well loved and worn.

He feels the human essence of himself sinking, grappling futilely against the rising tide of the Shift. Sharpening teeth click against each other as he licks his lips. His fingers crook painfully, bones elongating into claws.

A dozen heartbeats surround him, maybe more - more than the number of Hunters in his line of sight. More of them, hiding, maybe. The tiny little part of him that is still _Keith_ \- nothing more than a speck of survival instinct tossed around on the turbulence of the Shift - is yelling that he can't fight them all. That there's no way he'll survive.

The beast ignores it.

He snarls, legs tensing to push away and leap at the Hunters.

A loud roar stops him in his tracks. The smell of _animal_ is suddenly overwhelming. Right in front of him, loping out of the shadows, is the largest brown bear he's ever seen. They're in Iowa, his brain argues with his eyes, where no one has seen a bear in the past ten years.

And yet.

Keith backpedals as the bear roars again, rearing up on its hind legs to swipe at the Hunters desperately trying to run from it. They don't stand a chance. The bear is huge, and faster than any bear has a right to be. Hunters go flying in almost comical arcs as the bear tears into them. Keith finds himself frozen to the spot, staring at the spectacle in awe.

Then another scent catches his attention. This one is different from the bear's - sharp, dry and earthy, where the bear's is heavy, almost mossy. This scent is distinctly canine, light and quick in a way that suggests something small and swift.

Keith's eyes fly to the shadows, casting around for the source. They land on a small fox, darting from between the trees to weave through the Hunters' legs, tearing at their heels with a growl that seems too vicious to be coming from such a small body. The bear and the fox seem to be working together. As Keith watches them, he notices that their movements are calculated, their eyes just a bit too sharp. When the bear knocks a Hunter down, the fox pounces on him, scratching at his face. When another Hunter trains a crossbow on them, the Bear lowers one big paw for the fox to jump on, nimble and light legs launching it straight onto the Hunter's chest.

They're Were-creatures. Like him.

The realization hits him like a punch to the face, spurring him back into action. He leaps into the fray, and like before, instinct takes over. He lets it, this time, willingly giving over to the beast. The Shift consumes him, and he loses himself in the thrill of the hunt. Everything fades except the notion of _predator_ and _prey_.

By the time the human part of him is able to fight through the haze of bloodlust, the few Hunters that were left had run away.

His chest heaves as he comes down, heart pounding hard enough to physically hurt. He feels himself changing, slowly, reverting back to his human self. His fingers spasm as the claws retract. His skin crawls where fur disappears. The backs of his eyeballs ache, his vision blurring as his senses return to normal.

By the time the Shift back to human is done, he finds himself hunkered over with one hand pressed against the cool metal of a nearby train, dry-retching.

A scuffed step behind him makes him whip around. A large man wearing only a pair of loose sweatpants is blocking his way. He holds out his hands. "Whoa, it's okay. We come in peace."

A head of copper hair pokes out from behind him, staring at Keith owlishly from behind a pair of huge glasses. The girl grins, then waves at him.

"Who are you?" Keith growls, his voice filled with rough gravel. He clears his throat.

"My name's Hunk," the man says, taking a step closer so Keith can see his broad face, gentle eyes, and tentative smile. He thumbs over his shoulder, "And this is Pidge."

"Hey," says Pidge.

Keith watches them suspiciously.

"You okay?" Hunk asks, craning his neck. "You don't look hurt."

The wind changes, carrying their scent to Keith. He pauses, blinking. Then inhales deeply. He recognizes their smell. He's just been immersed in it.

"You... You're the bear? And the fox?" He stares at them.

"Yup." Hunk grins. "Always happy to help out a fellow Were."

"Wh... How..." Keith doesn't know what to say.

"You're pretty new at this, aren't you?" Pidge says, stepping out from behind Hunk to study Keith. She's wearing a tube top and the same loose sweatpants. She pushes her glasses up her nose, then turns to Hunk. "I think he's Unversed."

"What's Unversed?" Keith asks at the same time as Hunk audibly gasps.

"Someone who wasn't born into a Were family." Pidge explains. "Who doesn't know anything about our world."

"I just found out I could... Shift... a couple days ago." Keith confesses, head spinning.

"Thought so," Pidge says.

Hunk walks up to him, holding out a hand. "Hey. Why don't you come with us? I bet you have a lot of questions."

Keith looks at Hunk's hand, biting his lip. "I thought I was the only one."

Hunk chuckles. "Oh man. No. You're not even the only Werewolf in Davenport."

"Were...wolf..." Keith breathes.

Pidge stares at him, then takes a deep breath. "Oh, boy. We have a _lot_ of work to do."

\---

Pidge and Hunk change into clothes retrieved from bags hidden behind a dumpster two roads over. Keith waits by the corner, keeping an eye out for the Hunters. He raises an eyebrow when the Weres reappear, dressed in completely normal street clothes. The contrast to their animal forms paints an interesting picture.

The pair take him via side roads and back alleys, not exactly sneaking, but more or less keeping to the shadows. They cross town going in the opposite direction to Keith's apartment, and end up at the dimly-lit back of what can only be a bar.

Keith looks up at the chipped, barely-legible sign, then at Hunk and Pidge, who walk confidently up to the narrow door and turn to wait for him.

"Welcome to the Castle of Lions," Pidge says, opening the door and gesturing for Keith to go inside.

Keith takes a deep breath, and steps inside.

Officially, he learns later, the bar is called Altea.

The reason for its unusual moniker soon becomes apparent, however, when he steps fully inside. One entire wall of the bar turns out to be covered in a giant mural of a futuristic castle, framed by five stylized lions shaped like constellations in the night sky above it.

Keith stares, then turns to Hunk. "I don't understand."

Hunk shakes his head. "Oh, we're not here for the bar. Follow me."

He leads Keith along the wall and around the corner, heedless of the smoke and noise and clamor of the patrons. Everything smells vaguely of alcohol in the way of bars, and the floor is slightly sticky.

They walk along a long, dark corridor and down a flight of stairs. Pidge trails behind them, her footsteps light in contrast to Hunk's heavy ones. At this point Keith realizes he should probably be starting to worry about what he'll find at the bottom of the stairs. He's seen enough movies to know where long, dark stairwells hidden at the back of bars usually lead. There's something about these two, though, that puts his mind at ease. Their presence seems comforting - trustworthy, somehow.

Hunk opens another narrow door at the foot of the staircase. Light pours out into the corridor, throwing the cracked redbrick into sharp relief. Beyond the door is what obviously used to be a boiler room of some kind, now refurbished to contain a ratty old couch, a foosball table, and a mini-fridge thrust into one corner.

Keith pauses in the doorway, hesitant to step inside.

A young man leaps up from the couch when Hunk enters, shoving his phone into his pocket. "Oh man, there you guys are. I was so worried!"

"We're fine, Lance." Pidge assures him, squeezing past Keith and heading to the fridge to rummage around inside.

"Picked up a friend, too." Hunk thumbs at Keith, who is watching all of this with his arms crossed over his chest.

"Hi, I'm Lance." Lance thrusts out a hand toward him. "Nice mullet."

Keith looks at him until he lowers his hand again. He pouts, glancing at Hunk. "Sheesh. Not very talkative, is he?"

"Give him a break," Hunk says. "He's a newbie. Unversed, too."

Lance's eyebrows shoot up at that. "Kay. I see. I see. Well... you better come in, then, Mullet. We have a lot of ground to cover."

Keith hesitates, then lowers his arms, walking inside the room. "My name's Keith."

"Hello, Keith," the others chorus in unison, making Keith frown.

He forgoes the couch Hunk and Pidge have flopped down on, choosing to lean against the wall instead. He watches the three of them make small talk, the easy manner and familiarity they have with each other. They're obviously old acquaintances.

"So..." he says softly when there's a break in the conversation. "You," - he looks at Hunk - "are a Werebear. And Pidge is a Werefox."

"Yup," Hunk grins, while Pidge nods.

Keith looks at Lance. "So what are you, then?"

"Cuban," Lance says.

Keith blinks. "No. I mean... I mean, _what_ are you?"

"Uh..." Lance scratches the back of his head. "I play a fifth level wizard in Monsters and Mana?"

Keith stares at him. "You're. Human."

"Hey! You make that sound like an insult."

"I just don't... understand what's going on."

"This is a kind of... how to put it? Support group?" Hunk explains, getting up from the couch and coming over to Keith and Lance.

A support group for the supernatural community made up of a Werebear, a Werefox, and a moron, Keith thinks. He takes a deep breath.

Hunk continues, "Members of the Were-community -- and allies --" he quickly adds when Lance elbows him, "can come here when they need help. It's run by the Fae. They're impartial, so all Weres are welcome here."

"Fae, as in..." Keith stares at him.

"Well, no." Pidge says from the direction of the couch. "You're probably imagining fairies, like in Peter Pan. Allura and Coran are not like that at all. You'll see when you meet them."

In Keith's head, the image of Tinker-Bell goes up in smoke.

"And I'm a Were..."

"Wolf," Hunk completes. "Yeah."

"Oh wow, cool!" Lance enthuses, grabbing Keith by the shoulders and twisting him around to examine his ears. "Haven't met one of those before!"

Keith shakes him off angrily, retreating a few steps.

"Take it easy on him," Pidge says, "He only found out a few days ago."

"Oh man," Lance sympathizes, "Rough. First time Shifting?"

"Second." Keith says, because what else can he say? "But..." He thinks back to the fight in the alley. The bear and the fox trail streaks of light in his mind's eye. "It wasn't like you guys."

"You can't Shift fully yet," Pidge says, coming over to them as well. "It'll take a while for your human side to let go enough to allow it."

That sounds absolutely terrifying. "Let go?"

"It's like giving yourself over fully to the beast. If you don't trust it, you'll never be able to fully Shift."

Keith doesn't reply. He does, however, sit down.

The trio spend the next two hours telling Keith about the world of the supernatural, and his meagre time spent on Google researching vampires turns out to be woefully inadequate in preparing him for the reality of the situation. Vampires. Werewolves. Witches, fairies, zombies. A whole world, a whole other realm of creatures living right here in the city. And he's one of them.

They explain the Shift, the mechanisms behind turning beast. They explain the bloodlust and the hunger, and how he should be careful of full moons. But more than anything - more than Shifting, more than Hunters, more than the blind rage borne of moonlight - they warn him to be careful of vampires. He doesn't ask why, and after that, he makes very sure he doesn't mention them again.

He leaves the bar with three new contacts in his phone and a head reeling with information. Pidge, Hunk and Lance tell him to come see them again anytime. Keith doesn't reply.

That night, he lies in bed with his head pillowed on his arms, watching the crescent moon drift in and out of view behind snow-heavy clouds outside his window. He'd known he wouldn't be able to sleep, not after meeting the other Weres (and Lance). He had thought, though, that it would be because his mind would be too occupied with the revelations of the day.

Instead, he finds himself thinking about the woman who was with the group of Hunters.

Her scent had been so familiar. He's sure he's smelled it before. The way it had jarred him, like an almost physical blow of recognition... He _knows_ that woman. He doesn't know how or where from, but the sense of conviction is too strong to deny.

_Who are you?_ is his last thought before drifting off to sleep, shortly before dawn.

\---

He doesn't mean to sleep so long, but his body must be tired, because when he wakes up, the sun is already starting to set. His phone is a mess of notifications - three from work, informing him he's late, again, asking where he is, checking if he's ok. A bunch are from the Weres. Apparently he's in a group chat with them, now. Keith has never been in a group chat before and finds the rapid-fire texts overwhelming. He closes the conversation quickly, tossing his phone on the bed.

He makes his way to the bathroom to heed the call of nature. After washing his hands, he presses his finger into his canines, checking for sharp ends, but everything seems normal. When he's ascertained that it's safe, he dares to glance at himself in the mirror. Apart from an errant tuft of hair sticking up at an odd angle, he looks the same as usual. No sharpened fangs or animalistic claws, no fur sprouting on his cheeks.

He can't decide if he's relieved, or disappointed. Maybe a bit of both.

It's dark outside by the time he finishes showering. He changes into sweatpants and a T-shirt, and heads downstairs for a smoke. It's not too late to make his night classes if he leaves now, but he's still feeling lethargic from sleeping all day, and he's not in the right headspace to take in new information anyway. Learning about the supernatural world is more than enough for his brain to process right now.

He stops on the sidewalk, cupping his hand around the cigarette to light up.

"Keith."

The voice sends a thrill racing down his spine, a thousand tiny needles prickling into his vertebrae. He freezes for a long second, then takes a deep drag on the cigarette, lowering his hand. And then he turns around to face Shiro.

"Hey."

As if on cue, the clouds part overhead. Moonlight washes over Shiro, lighting his hair and his eyes with liquid silver. His skin is white as marble, completely smooth but for the scar over his nose. His suit makes him look impossibly broad, the shirt stretched almost too tightly over the muscular chest peeking out from the open top button. His arms are hidden behind long coat sleeves, a glint of silver the only sign of the prosthetic hand resting in one pocket.

Keith swallows, tasting his heartbeat in his mouth.

"I wanted to apologize for last night," Shiro says. "The way I left was..."

"'s okay." Keith lies. "We're good." He doesn't hold it against Shiro that he wasn't there when he got attacked by Hunters. He doesn't mind that Shiro just ran off without so much as a goodbye.

Only, he does. And Shiro picks up on it, because of course, vampires can read minds. Another fun fact he recently learned.

"How can I make it up to you?" Shiro says.

Keith digs in his pocket, and tosses his phone at Shiro without preamble. Shiro snatches it out of the air lightning-quick, then looks down at it with a small, confused frown.

Keith smiles slightly. "Give me your number."

Shiro glances at him, then pulls his other hand out his pocket to grasp the phone. He holds it like he isn't quite sure how, like he isn't used to the shape of it in his hands. He uses one finger to type each character slowly, with intent. Keith finds himself smiling fondly, if a little incredulously, at the sight. Shiro must be hundreds of years old, can move at the speed of light and is stronger than a hundred human men combined, and he still hasn't gotten the hang of something as simple as a phone.

And this is the fearsome vampire the Weres had warned him about.

Hastily pushing down the warmth that had slowly started creeping up his chest, Keith drags his eyes away from Shiro's face.

They land on the pale skin of his wrist. Its perfection is marred by the edge of an angry red welt disappearing behind his sleeve, visible only because the sleeve is sagging down.

The next moment, Keith finds himself in front of Shiro, not entirely sure how he got there. He's holding Shiro's wrist in one hand. Keith blinks at it. Shiro looks at least as surprised as Keith feels. The phone is frozen in the air in his other hand.

They stare at each other for a moment, then - "These marks." Keith pulls down Shiro's sleeve quickly, revealing more welts. They circle his forearm, deep and angry-looking. "They're from the other night, aren't they?"

In his mind's eye, he replays the first battle with the Hunters, four nights ago now. They'd sprinkled clear liquid onto him from a square bottle, and where the drops had landed, steam had risen from the wounds as though he'd been burned.

Shiro pulls away from him, tugging his sleeve up over the lesions. "Holy water."

Keith meets his eyes, questing. "You... haven't healed. I thought it was quicker for... us."

Shiro sighs softly, taking Keith's hand and pressing the phone back into it. "It's because I haven't eaten. Without blood, my body can't start the healing process. Without it, I'm... basically a corpse." He chuckles a bit on the last part, as if he finds something funny about it.

"_Shiro_."

Shiro must see the horrified expression on his face, because he grins a bit apologetically, waving one negating hand. "It's fine, Keith. I'm fine, really. You don't need to worry about me."

"But you can't live like this. You need to eat."

Shiro shakes his head. "It's not that easy." He looks away. "I'm... scared. If I feed now, I'm scared I won't be able to stop. And I don't want to hurt anyone. I can't. I'd never forgive myself."

"Drink my blood, then." Keith blurts out.

Shiro's eyes whip up to meet his, wide. Then he backs away a few steps. "_No._"

In the street beside them, cars chase the curling steam rising off the cold road.

Keith follows Shiro, his heart racing. "Yes. Shiro, drink my blood. I'm only half human. I heal fast. It'll be fine."

Shiro is still shaking his head, so Keith reaches out and grabs his hand. To his surprise, Shiro lets him. He isn't sure if it's shock or something else, but Shiro lets himself be pulled forward until he's almost flush against Keith.

Keith swallows hard, their proximity sending tingles down his spine. Adrenaline surges through his veins, and he can start to feel his senses heighten - his vision sharpens just slightly, the corners of everything coming into stark relief, and Shiro's cold and slightly metallic smell fills his nose.

When he feels his own slightly sharpened fang brush against his bottom lip, inspiration strikes. He bites down until he tastes blood, the sharp sting of the cut causing a surge of anticipation. And he didn't think Shiro was that much taller than him, but he finds himself having to lean up on tiptoe to press their mouths together.

Shiro seems to freeze in place, his wrist taught in Keith's fingers. Then the tension seems to seep out of him all at once. His arms come around Keith, pulling him tightly against his chest. His mouth starts to move against Keith's, and it isn't like in the movies. It isn't one of those warm and close-mouthed, chaste kisses - instead, like dry ice and liquid mercury, it's a cold kind of fire, thick with a kind of dark, primal desire that the wolf inside Keith responds to. Shiro's tongue drags over the rapidly-healing cut before he sucks Keith's whole lip between his teeth, letting his sharp incisors drag over the flesh inside his lip.

Keith can't help the soft sound that escapes his throat. His body melts into Shiro's, his heart pounding with excitement, with the need for more. He tentatively lets his hands slide around Shiro, trailing over his broad back and rubbing up and down over his spine, surprised and not a little pleased when Shiro lets him.

When Shiro pulls away, Keith can't help but swoon after him a little, trying to prolong the kiss.

Shiro doesn't allow it. Instead, his head lowers down and to the side. Keith gasps at the short, stinging pain of the bite, and then everything gets drowned in the wave of bliss that washes over him. His body goes limp, relying entirely on Shiro's arms around him to hold him up.

There's no space left between them now. Keith can acutely feel every line, every curve and each of Shiro's muscles where they press into him. His world narrows down to the point where his lips connect with his neck. His vision blurs over - and it's not like being blind, not exactly. Instead, it's like the only thing he can see is Shiro, like his whole world is made up of silver hair and fine dark wool.

Keith can feel his heart beating in the space where Shiro's fangs spear into his neck. Euphoria claims him, every nerve on fire, and soon the heat spreads to the rest of his body. He's unable to stop the embarrassingly loud moan from escaping his lips. And this? If the kiss before had been fireworks, this is a supernova. This is comets and black holes, this is the fire buried deep under the earth. Shiro is all the stars in the night sky, Shiro is the ground shaking beneath the gravity of their touch. Time stands still for a long moment.

And then Keith starts to feel lightheaded. His knees buckle, and he feels his body sinking toward the ground. His heart starts racing, and when he lifts his arms off Shiro's back, his hands shake alarmingly. The point where Shiro's fangs are conjoined with his neck starts to ache, a deep kind of ache he imagines he can feel travel all the way down his jugular vein into the crook of his elbow.

"Sh... Shiro..." he says weakly, trying to push Shiro away. "Stop..."

Shiro pulls him harder against him, seeming unable to control himself.

The wolf roars to life inside Keith, adrenaline spurring it on. He growls, slamming sharpened claws against Shiro's chest and pushing him forcefully away. The vampire stumbles back a few steps, shock written in every line of his face and posture.

Keith is breathing hard. With the immediate threat removed, his body gives in to the blood loss. The world spins dangerously around him, and the last thing he hears before blacking out is Shiro's voice, echoing as if over a great distance, calling his name.

\---

_"Keith."_

_"Keith, it's time to wake up."_

Keith opens his eyes. For a moment, he doesn't know where he is. He looks around. He's in a warm room. Dust motes dance on the beam of sunlight coming through the window. Fine white curtains billow gently in the breeze. He's enveloped in the smell of rough-hewn wooden floorboards, orange blossoms blooming on the trees planted outside, and a familiar perfume, airy and fragrant.

A shadow crosses his field of vision, locks of dark hair tumbling down to tickle his face.

A laugh tinkles like bells as he wrinkles his nose.

"Mom?" he says sleepily. Why can't he make out her face? It's all blurred, as if he's looking through a pane of frosted glass.

_"I'm here, Keith,"_ his mom replies,_ "I'm right here."_

And,

_"I've always been here."_

And,

_"It's time to wake up."_

"Mom!" Keith's eyes fly open and he sits upright with a gasp.

The female Hunter from the alley. He remembers her now. He knows why she smelled so familiar.

  
He buries his face in his hands, the world seeming to drop out from beneath him. The night of the fire replays in his head, the urgency of trying to get to his parents and the despair of losing them. He remembers so clearly Shiro's deep voice, murmuring right by his ear, _"I'm sorry, it's too late. I couldn't save them."_

But Krolia was alive.

_My mom is alive._

The thought sends a shiver down his spine. This is followed shortly by a wave of confusion that makes him frown. Why would Shiro say she had died?

No. He'd said he couldn't save her. That was different.

A thousand questions whirling around in his head, he lowers his hands, looking around his surroundings for the first time.

He finds himself in an unfamiliar room. Only the barest hint of sunlight filters through a crack in the heavy curtains, but it's enough to see by. The room is huge, and everything inside it looks expensive. Four heavily-gilded posts surround the bed he's sitting in, joined by velvet drapes of a rich color that seems almost like ink in the dark. A crystal chandelier hangs from the ceiling. Ornate chests and divans are scattered around the room, and framed works of art occupy almost every available space on the wall.

Keith notices the lack of mirrors first. Second, he notices his jacket and gloves neatly folded on the divan next to the bed, shoes arranged on the ground beneath it. Third, he notices the message card propped against an expensive-looking vase on the nightstand. He leans over to pick it up, peering at it in the dark.

He can just make out the words: "Help yourself to anything in the house. Make sure you take lots of fluids and eat something. See you tonight. ~Shiro."

Keith's hand rises automatically to touch the side of his neck. The wounds from Shiro's fangs have already healed, leaving not so much as a scar. Shiro must have brought him back here after he passed out earlier.

He looks down at the message card again, then crumples it in his hand.

"Shiro..."

_Did you lie to me?_


End file.
